Unfortunately, the British Columbia Court of Appeal’s decision on Insite may not bring an end to the Harper Conservatives’ determination to shut it down – a facility that our province and our city have quite fairly described as a health care initiative.

Friday’s judgement was interesting and complex, with debate focused on such related issues as interjurisdictional  immunity, provincial paramountcy, and co-operative federalism.  But what was really interesting were the more general policy statements, unencumbered by Canada’s legal structure, and aimed at the heart of the policy issues that we have all been debating. The dissenting judgement, one which would have allowed the appeal of the federal government, concluded, “The current harm reduction model employed at Insite cannot stand isolated from the sourcing, distribution and sale in Canada of the illicit drugs used in its facility, by willfully ignoring the context in which those drugs arrive in the possession of its clientele. This conflicts with Canada’s constitutional mandate for criminal law, which includes the control of dangerous and addictive drugs for the health and public safety of its citizens”.

But who is suggesting that the harm reduction model employed at Insite stands isolated from enforcement of the criminal law? The four pillars approach to drug control embraces enforcement as one of its pillars, along with harm reduction, prevention and treatment. This is the point – if we are going to impact the problems of drug addiction, we cannot adopt one approach in isolation of all others. There is a time and a place for harm reduction, and a time and a place for enforcement. And, yes, of course, there is also the matter of co-operative federalism, the importance of respecting the jurisdictional interests of the province.

But much more telling is a trio of claims in the dissenting judgement “. Justice Smith argues that having a prohibition against possession “provides an impediment to some individuals who may entertain the notion that they can experiment with drugs yet avoid the health risks associated with their use”. She goes on to suggest that prohibition also affects the supply of drugs on the street – and thirdly that “prohibition attempts to protect both the health of potential drug users and the safety of the public who are affected by drug-related crimes”, noting that “recent gang violence in Vancouver provides an example of this latter concern”.

The first point is difficult to understand, particularly given the context of Insite. The suggestion appears to be that, given a continuing exemption from prosecution, individuals are or may be coming to the facility in order to experiment with injectable drugs.  No evidence is offered for such a claim, nor is any credible evidence available. The second point – that prohibition affects supply – is simply false, both locally and globally. Drug markets are remarkably resilient; there is a mountain of evidence demonstrating that the prices and amounts of illegal drugs have been largely unaffected by policies of prohibition. The third point, linking recent gang violence in Vancouver with “the health of potential drug users and the safety of the public” mixes apples and oranges. The young men killing each other on the streets of the Lower Mainland are a world away from the injection drug users who frequent Insite.

And so it goes. The ball is back in Stephen Harper’s court, and in the court of his Health and Justice ministers. What will they do? If past practice is any indication, they will continue to waste tax dollars on an ill-considered and wholly unproductive moral crusade.

As we turn the corner on another decade, hopes for a more peaceful society seem to be somewhat elusive –  locally, nationally and globally.

Here in Vancouver our city Council has approved the licensing of Mixed Martial Arts, a sport that takes boxing to another level, while still retaining its key goal – one man displaying the speed, ferocity and strength to knock another unconscious. On the national stage, the rate of handgun homicides in our major urban centres has been climbing for a decade, as young men with guns kill their adversaries for a wide range of reasons, ranging from theft and failure to repay debt, to imagined or real insult.  On the international stage, matters are even worse. We have literally tens of thousands of individuals, again almost always men, committed to killing as part of some ill-conceived political and/or religious agenda (or mental illness).

What’s the solution? Well, first, let’s separate the mixed martial arts combatants from the young gangsters and the terrorists; at least these folks are playing by some rules. And I must confess, as much as I dislike the blood and the violence, I’m not sure that prohibition of the sport is ultimately a helpful strategy. Increased regulation brings increased safety for those who choose to participate: restrictions on eye gouging and groin kicks, for example, and the comfort of knowing that a properly certified neurologist is sitting ringside.

Ok, so it’s difficult to be enthusiastic. On a brighter note, however, the activity of the mixed martial arts enthusiasts is a world away from the young men who are carrying handguns, and wholly immersed in an illegal drug trade that can erupt into violence, with occasionally innocent victims. We keep hearing about the need to get tough with “these thugs”, conveniently forgetting that they are more than willing to risk their lives with their competition, never mind the police. It’s increased certainty of apprehension that we need, not more punishment – resources for prevention and interdiction, not the empty symbolism of longer jail terms (convictions for first and second degree murder already attract a life sentence).

And what of those we define as terrorists? Those who for reasons of political and/or religious conviction and/or mental illness are willing to kill men, women and children whom they’ve never met? Getting tough with them is even less helpful than getting tough with young gangsters who carry guns; self-protection requires a pre-emptive response, fair enough. But it’s a pretty depressing and ultimately futile long-term strategy. These folks are even more deluded than young gangsters; they welcome death as martyrs.

My point, however, is not to lament the extent of senseless violence on the planet  – more global genocides in the last century than in any other in history, and so on.  It is to suggest that we will need to be much more creative in our responses to violence that we have been to date, recognizing that our tool box cannot be limited to the often necessary strategy of arrest, conviction and imprisonment.

Why is it that some young men want to knock other young men unconscious? And why is this perceived as enjoyable entertainment by so many others? Why is it that young men decide to enter the illegal drug trade, armed with handguns, and willing to turn these guns on their adversaries? And finally, and perhaps most important, what can be done to alter the trajectories of young men before they decide to sacrifice their lives to the cause of killing others? If we can begin to answer these questions in a thoughtful and constructive manner, we will be at least a small step further along the road to a more peaceful society.

We climbed into the back of the taxi and began an air-conditioned 45 minute drive through the back roads of St. Thomas, en route to our hotel. The town of Charlotte Amalie was our point of departure, the hub of the island — a home port for cruise ships and folks like ourselves, travellers by ferry from the British Virgin Islands.

I knew a little bit about St. Thomas and the U.S. Virgin Islands – the region has a murder rate of more than 40 killings annually for every 100,000 residents, a rate that is about 20 times as high as Canada’s and seven times as high as the American average.

We were soon driving through a more rural part of the island, with chickens and goats by the side of the roads, here and there a few groups of men sitting around tables, drinking beer. It was hot, almost 30 degrees, and there were occasional splatters of late afternoon rain. The driver stopped his taxi frequently, letting other cars into the flow, letting young and old cross the road.

He was well into his 70s, born in nearby Tortola, but a resident of St. Thomas for the past 30 years. His two daughters had taken advantage of the U.S. citizenship that their father had secured for them; one had moved to Raleigh, North Carolina and the other to Portland, Oregon; one worked with IBM and the other with the U.S. government.

He told us that his two sons still lived in St. Thomas; they worked full-time, but they were also involved in the drug trade; he laughed and shook his head. That was my entrée. So, you have quite a lot of crime in St. Thomas, I said.

“Yes”, he agreed. “But it’s a safe place for me to be”, he added, “I can go anywhere on the island and I feel safe; no one is going to hurt me. There’s theft, people taking things, and there’s some of the young men…..”

His voice trailed off. I asked about the murder rate. “Young guys with guns, killing each other over drugs” he said, and sometimes it’s not even drugs, just the stupidest of things they kill each other for, but they don’t care about me. It’s guns and drugs, and they kill each other, not the tourists. “ He laughed again.

“I don’t know”, he went on. “They say the marijuana isn’t as bad as smoking and alcohol. I can see that”, he said. “That’s probably true. Maybe they should just treat it like the others; I don’t know, but I think so. It’s the young guys and their guns, that’s the problem.”

So, here we were, 5,000 kilometres from home, with the same drama playing itself out on the streets of St. Thomas, as in Vancouver, albeit on a proportionately larger scale. This is America, after all, and everything is necessarily big: the guns, the people themselves and, of course, their political rhetoric.

But in the midst of all this craziness, an old taxi driver, with a sense of humour and an understanding that we live in a world which often doesn’t make a lot of sense. For him, no fingers pointed in recrimination, blame or anger, always stopping to let other cars in, always smiling. 

My wife and I moved to Bowen Island in the spring of 1979, enchanted by the vast green spaces, the swirl of wood smoke on a damp March morning, and the interesting mix of what we would soon describe as hippies and rednecks. There were fewer than 800 full-time residents then, and in most important respects we had all come to Bowen Island to get away from urban life. After all, you don’t move to a small island, accessible only by ferry, for the nightlife and the shopping; most of us are, almost by definition, a little reclusive. We value community, but we also like privacy, quiet and nature, and the lifestyle that these characteristics afford.

It soon became apparent that there was something of a political battle going on between the hippies and the rednecks; I was a longhaired liberal university professor, so it was pretty easy for me to pick my team. Generally speaking, it could be said that we hippies wanted to protect the land and the rednecks wanted to develop it. Our land use planning was governed by the Islands Trust and its mandate to “preserve and protect” the province’s Gulf Islands. And we liked it that way; we were pleased that Bowen Island was legally described as an “unorganized territory”.  The twin concepts of “preserve and protect” and “unorganized territory” sent out a strong message – we didn’t want developers and development. More simply put, we didn’t want population growth.

So what happened? While the rest of the metropolitan Vancouver region not quite doubled its population between 1981 and 2006, the population of Bowen Island increased by almost 400 per cent.  In proportion to the rest of metro Vancouver, our development has been rampant. And our ferry service, running back and forth across the Howe Sound 15 times every day, has given us the largest per capita carbon footprint of any municipality in the region, if not the country.

There have been many good reasons for people moving to Bowen Island:  cheaper housing than in many other municipalities, and with much larger lots; easy access to the benefits of the city; a safe and wonderfully green environment in which to raise children; a bucolic haven for the burgeoning demographic of retirees; and a workable commute for the emerging demographic of tele-commuters, those who can now work from home and venture into Vancouver, only occasionally, for meetings and other commitments.

Put differently, social and cultural changes trumped whatever hopes we might have had of keeping the island’s population small; by now a good deal of the land in private hands has been developed and sold. But there remain many empty lots and a few large parcels of land, still anticipating future applications for development. What will be our guiding principles? Keeping the population growth as small as the bylaws permit, through 10 acre lot developments, or trying to build an economically diverse and sustainable community, with community amenities such as commonly owned recreational spaces, parkland and trails?

The population of Bowen Island has changed, of course; it would no longer be accurate to describe Bowen Island as a collection of hippies and rednecks. Unlike many of my old friends, I don’t long for the days of the early 1980s. We are a more complete and more environmentally sustainable community than we were a generation ago; we don’t have to go to the city to see a doctor or have a prescription filled, to shop at a good grocery store, play a round of golf, or eat at any one of several excellent restaurants. I still hold the same values: protect the land and support the notion of a small community, something entirely different from the urban landscape of Vancouver.

But our choices are different now. Almost all of our zoning for the past two decades has supported large acreage sprawl — the best way to achieve the least population growth. One of the consequences has been the building of trophy homes for the affluent – often vacation homes for those who spend no more than a month or two on Bowen in the warm summer weather. The price of the cheapest single family home now sits at about $500,000, and successive councils have yet to give a green light to any other kind of development; townhouses and apartments are derided as “urban visions”, even if surrounded by acres of commonly owned green space.

Put differently, we are morphing into an elite community that caters to the wealthy, and, more important, our affection for large acreage sprawl is increasingly putting land at risk, rather than protecting it. Over time, the privately owned 10 acre lot is subdivided into a five acre lot, then 2.5 acres, and so on. In this new world the question of who is holding true to their original ideals has become considerably muddy.

Since 1999 we have been a municipality within the Islands Trust, and old habits die hard. The restriction of population growth remains a rallying cry for many Islanders. For these folks, the issue of population growth is not just important: it is the linchpin for the evaluation of all development proposals, the only variable of overriding significance. Ironically, while they claim that restricting population growth is the best way to protect our conifers and diverse eco-systems, large lot zoning actually permits more massive tree-cutting and environmental destruction than almost any other form of land use. More important, large-lot zoning creates an ever-deepening cycle of vehicle dependency. The associated carbon emissions have caused, and continue to cause, global impacts that are, frankly, unconscionable. Beyond our splendid isolationism, our highly selective view of how best “to protect the environment” is growing less and less acceptable — we should be embarrassed.

Sad to say, it is this presumed need to restrict population as much as legally possible that compromises environmental protection, an environmentally sustainable economy and community diversity.

In this new reality, even the labels that we apply to ourselves are up for debate. Who speaks for the environment? Who are the hippies and who are the rednecks?

 Life was so much simpler 30 years ago.

Let’s assume that mandatory minimum sentences for the distribution of illegal drugs represent good social policy, sending a message to would be participants in the commercial trade. One could then argue that mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment tell drug dealers that their activities will have some new consequences, consequences that will serve to curtail their involvement in the business, particularly if they use weapons, or engage in any form of intimidation.

Unfortunately, the bill has its own internal contradictions, regardless of whether one believes in its approach. The most significant contradiction is its relatively harsh treatment of cannabis production, in contrast to its treatment of the trafficking (or possession for the purpose of trafficking) in cannabis (and heroin and cocaine). Section 5(3) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is to be amended to provide for a minimum term of one year imprisonment for trafficking in heroin, cocaine or cannabis, provided that the convicted person commits the offence as part of a criminal organization, uses violence in committing the offence, is carrying or threatening to use a weapon in committing the offence — or has served a term of imprisonment for a designated substance offence (typically trafficking or importing an illegal drug). Somewhat surprisingly and quite inconsistently, these same caveats are not applied to the offence of marijuana production (section 3.1 (b) of Bill C-15). Granted, the minimum term of imprisonment is six months, rather than one year, but the irony is that the distributors of more dangerous drugs are to be treated less harshly than the producers of a less dangerous drug (cannabis), irrespective of the actual amounts involved. And even more oddly, the distributors of cannabis are to be treated differently from the producers of cannabis, again irrespective of the amounts in question.

Additionally, consider section 1. (1) (a) (i) (D) of Bill C-15, the proposed imposition of a mandatory term of one year in prison, if the convicted drug distributor has served a term of imprisonment for distribution of marijuana, cocaine, or heroin at any point during the previous 10 years. Think of the user-dealer with longstanding addiction and mental health problems, convicted of selling a small amount of crack cocaine to his associates and having previously served a short jail sentence for this crime. Is this the kind of person that we now want to target — to lock up for a minimum of one year? It seems quite clear that if our politicians leave this section as it is, it will fill our jails with hundreds of individuals annually who are far from commercially driven by the illicit trade – individuals who might be better served by a range of treatment modalities than by a mandated term of imprisonment.

But back to the Bill’s most glaring inconsistency — its much harsher treatment of the production of cannabis (in contrast to the distribution of cannabis, cocaine or heroin). C-15 will impose a minimum term of imprisonment of six months on any grower of six plants or more, irrespective of the issues of violence, weaponry or the presence of criminal networks. It scarcely needs to be said that marijuana growers are not uniformly violent; studies to date indicate that the industry is far from hierarchical, and, accordingly, is replete with a variety of unrelated grow operations. The majority of growers do not use violence, do not carry weapons and are not part of any criminal organization, as defined by section 467.1 (1) of the Criminal Code (unless any individuals who conspire to grow marijuana are, by definition, organized criminals). In these circumstances, Bill C-15 will have the unfortunate consequence of annually jailing thousands of Canadians who do not threaten the social fabric any more than those who produce, in a regulated framework, drugs such as tobacco and alcohol. And if morbidity is our benchmark, it might be fairly said that the producers of alcohol and tobacco are imposing much greater harms upon our communities, even when rates of use of each of these drugs are taken into account.

This is a problem. Why does the Bill, which is purported to attack the commercial aspects of the trade, and the violence within it, nonetheless target addicted user/dealers? And why does it slam marijuana producers with minimum terms, but offer up a more lenient treatment for the distributors of the same drug, irrespective of the amounts in question? I have yet to find any good answers for these questions.

I am a child of the 1960s, a product of a rather different era. We were told to question authority and never to trust anyone over 30. We took issue with the morality of what sociologist C. Wright Mills once called the power elites, and we urged greater equality for men and women, rich and poor, gay and straight, and so on.

It is, therefore, particularly disturbing to see that the language of equality and a corresponding distrust of elites is now being used to justify nutty crusades. Take, for example, the need for balance in political debate. Fair enough — for the sake of equality, it’s important that a range of viewpoints be considered. Unfortunately this can produce results of quite silly proportions, when scientists (the power elite) are challenged by those who ascribe the workings of the universe to, take your pick, God, Allah, astrology, the spirit world, or a special bond with the earth. In this world view, equality might dictate, for example, that students be taught not only Darwinism but a literal form of creationism. After all, 45 per cent of Americans believe that God created human beings — in their present form — at some point during the past 10,000 years. Their conception of equality demands that their system of knowledge formation be given respect, even though polls demonstrate that less than one quarter of one percent of American scientists with appropriate educational credentials hold the same point of view. For literal creationists this is all the more telling– it just demonstrates the need for balancing the views of elites with the views of the average working person.

Or, in a more secular sphere, consider the recent commentary of Ian Brodie, formerly Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Chief of Staff. “Every time we proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, sociologists, criminologists, defence lawyers and Liberals attacked us for proposing measures that the evidence apparently showed did not work,” Brodie said. “That was a good thing for us politically, in that sociologists, criminologists and defence lawyers were and are all held in lower repute than Conservative politicians by the voting public. Politically it helped us tremendously to be attacked by this coalition of university types.”

In other words, sociologists, criminologists and defence lawyers represent an elite, and as such, are not to be trusted. Never mind that the “coalition of university types” happen to be correct, basing their opinions on carefully analyzed evidence rather than their emotions. Mr. Brodie doesn’t dispute the accuracy of the claim made by the “coalition”, but as he indicates, it’s quite irrelevant. Polling demonstrates that those with knowledge are mistrusted, perhaps even resented, when they propose measures that can be described, albeit inaccurately, as “soft on crime”. And the Conservatives, like the creationists, can take these feelings to the ballot box. Put differently, equality is not all that it appears to be, at least not here in the real world, in realpolitic.

One of the most striking developments of the last decade is the phenomenon best described as a war against science. The internet has given a platform to anyone with an opinion, regardless of merit: this is not a medium that moves knowledge forward on the basis of careful peer review of its content. To be blunt, any wack job with a computer can spew out his or her pet theories on, for example, the need to lock up all illicit drug offenders, why the polar icecaps are not actually receding, and why vaccination is a government plot, a conspiratorial spin of the roulette wheel, with your health in the balance.

But take, for example, the Harper Conservatives. They do actually reject the best available evidence in relation to crime; one has only to look at testimony before the House and Senate in relation to their proposals of mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment and the elimination of the faint hope clause. And they are pretty lukewarm when it comes to the science of climate change, historically more likely to side with the Bush Republicans than any other constituency. Their position is that the environment must not interfere with productive enterprise and the building of the gross domestic product – furthermore, there’s always a potential technological solution should the worst case scenario arrive on our doorstep.

On vaccination, however, they are paying attention to the best available science, echoing the claims of reputable epidemiologists – vaccination for H1N1 carries only the possibility of some future risk, while infection carries the reality of a nasty and even potentially fatal illness, particularly for those in high risk groups, — or through one’s role as a carrier of the disease.

So, what’s the diagnosis? On crime, getting tough is applauded by the majority of the public, moving the public opinion dial and the polls in the Conservatives’ favour. And more than that, these are folks who like the idea of punishment; they quite pointedly deleted the word “progressive” from the description of their party. They don’t really care if imprisoning thousands of Canadians has any benefits, In their world view, it’s the right thing to do. On the environment, their beliefs may ultimately flow from religious conviction – the earth is man’s dominion, and human beings will triumph, presumably because the “man upstairs” will take care of us. As Stockwell Day, our current Minister of International Trade and Commerce has said, “”As a Christian, I acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ over the whole universe … I believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God and every word in it, cover to cover, is true.”

The war against the science of vaccination comes from a different constituency – a rag tag mix of those who are suspicious of any action of government – true survivalists – and the new agers, spiritually driven and  emotionally “empowered”, folks often caustically described as granola heads.

It’s a curious combination of the left and the right: the hellfire of the pulpit and the nihilism of post-modern thought have combined to demonstrate that, at the extremes of the political spectrum, extreme left and extreme right converge: here we can find the roots of our opposition to science. The right tell us that God, not science, is in control of our destiny – he’s all for tough love with those who disobey, and he can help us get through the trickiest of problems. The extreme left tell us that you can create your own reality – science is an illusion. I prefer to cast my vote with, among others, Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, Banting and Best, and Salk. Our lives are now much less likely to be nasty, brutish and short – at least in the developed world. This has everything do with science — and nothing to do with either God or emotional empowerment.

There is a consistent thread in the recent Conservative crime bills; get tough on crime by imposing mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment. And it seems intuitively appealing – send the bad guys to jail for clearly determined periods of time, crime rates will drop and we will all have a more peaceful and safer society.

The trouble is that this vision has virtually no correspondence to reality. As much as we might hope that there are these kinds of simple solutions, science tells us, again and again, that reality is more complex. Take the most recent initiative – a minimum two year term for frauds involving $1 million or more. The Minister acknowledged at his press conference that he had no idea of past or current practices in such cases, a clear indication that he was proceeding not on the basis of the best available evidence, but simply to make a macho gesture of being “tough on crime”.

The problem with tackling white collar crime is well known to those in the business of doing so: there simply are not enough resources to take cases to court. As one prosecutor told me not long ago, he can take a violent rapist off the street for six years with about 10 days work; it would take him two years just to get into court against a white collar fraud of significant proportion.  The evidence is complex, those who are charged often have significant legal resources at their disposal and the trials can go on for months.

If there was a quick and easy fix for this problem, it would have been implemented long ago. It’s certainly fair to note that the penalties for white collar crime are relatively light,  in contrast to many crimes of violence, when one considers the extent of the harms done in many of these cases. Take, for example, the $175 million Eron Mortgage Fraud – hundreds of men and women in B.C. with their retirement dreams in tatters, many with their physical and emotional health compromised, marriages dissolved, families in misery. The perpetrators – Brian Slobogian and Frank Biller – received sentences of six and three years respectively, but as non-violent offenders were eligible for release after serving one sixth of their sentences.

Perhaps a better fix than mandatory minimum terms is a change to parole eligibility for those who have defrauded others of more than $1 million – not as good a sound bite as a two year minimum jail term, but probably somewhat more effective. And, more important, we might try to understand how and by what means we can improve both prevention and prosecution. A promise of a mandatory minimum of two years is just empty rhetoric, putting the proverbial cart before the horse.

 As I get older and necessarily see more of political machinations – from my own municipality of Bowen Island, and on to the provincial and federal levels of government – I am struck by the similarities between politics and the worst of competitive sport.

It’s not that I’m against competitive sport; I’ve indulged for almost all of my adult life and have had wonderful experiences. My difficulty is that the worst of competitive sport appears to resemble the essence of electoral politics – a winner take all system in which there is very little camaraderie between opposing sides, a distinct lack of interest in collaboration, and an ongoing derision of the character and morality of one’s opponents. Governments in power, whether they sit at the provincial or federal level, rarely represent a majority of the population, but typically act as if they have a mandate of overwhelming support.

Consider the Harper Conservatives: in a “best case” scenario of majority government, they would still only have support from about 40 per cent of Canadians. But they would then have the power to act in a manner that our system both permits and apparently extolls – the power to create law for only 40 per cent of the population. A simple remedy to this problem, at least for both federal and provincial governments, is a system of proportional representation: more parties, more diversity of viewpoints in framing legislation, and necessarily, more compromise and collaboration. We seemed to be close to something like this in British Columbia in our last election, but the specifics of the proposal just couldn’t be sold to the voters; we should try again.

Surveys have demonstrated that nation states with consensus-driven systems of decision-making have greater support from their citizens. Further, the same polling tells us that these systems of government are also correlated with greater trust in fellow citizens  – and that these citizens have greater confidence in their legal systems. Additionally, and perhaps not surprisingly, rates of imprisonment are much lower than in jurisdictions in which winner take all systems are employed. With more trust in one’s fellow citizens and more careful and collegial construction of legislation, there is less need to be punitive.

The picture is a little more complicated at the municipal level, where a system of proportional representation could not save us from ourselves; there are often many different viewpoints represented by half a dozen elected representatives or more. But the same difficulties can still arise in these town hall settings (not unlike those recent town hall meetings on health care in the United States), where two choices are argued about, where complicated issues come down to for and against, and dialogue and compromise take a back seat to saying yes or no to a given proposal. Add to this the reality that the men and women who run for political office, municipally, provincially, or nationally, rarely have well developed skills in the realms of compromise, consensus, and negotiated decision-making.

So it seems that the problem of collaborative governance goes beyond proportional representation, taking us to investment in an ethic of co-operative governance. In many senses it’s still about numbers – a recognition that substantial minorities need to be a part of any legal process – not every crank with a loud opinion, but credible and significant minorities.

It’s what many of us in my workplace (the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser) call a big tent approach. We welcome many different credible methodologies, ideologies and disciplines, and we try to provide support for all. We do, however, have one cardinal rule: don’t burn down the tent. For us, it’s not about winning and losing, it’s about moving forward, with the support and trust of our colleagues. It’s not always easy, but I like to think that we have something, at least at the moment, that could carry over quite well into the political realm.

In a recent contribution to the Mark (www.themarknews.com), entertainment lawyer Bob Tarantino takes me to task for my opposition to elimination of the faint hope clause. Although there is a good deal of vitriol, anger and ad hominem sentiment in his piece, his essential argument is relatively simple: punishment trumps deterrence, and murderers need more punishment, not less. In his view, if we eliminate the faint hope clause we fail to denounce — and we ask the victims of murder victims “to relive their experiences”.

It’s certainly fair to note that denunciation of morally outrageous conduct is an important goal of sentencing in criminal courts. But the point here is about the limits of punishment, and the reality that both first and second degree murderers will, for the most part, return to the community. It seems infinitely better to offer a small carrot towards the end of their lengthy terms of imprisonment, rather than resorting to the stick, and nothing but the stick. This appears to be Mr. Tarantino’s view of criminal justice – it’s all about the stick – about denunciation. In most of the more civilized nation states of Western Europe, our Canadian terms of imprisonment for homicide would be viewed, from the perspective of denunciation, as harshly excessive. I might add, from the practical vantage point of deterrence, that homicide rates are actually lower in most of these European jurisdictions.

Further, the combined effect of both plea negotiations and anomalous jury verdicts dictates that some of those convicted of first degree murder might have been more accurately convicted of second degree murder, or even manslaughter. Needless to say, the converse holds true; all justice systems have degrees of fallibility.

Finally, victims are not a uniform group. Some actually want to testify at faint hope hearings (for and against) – and, of course, there is no requirement that victims participate at all. The elimination of the faint hope clause can only be justified on the ground of denunciation – and that is only if one is inclined to endorse the prospect of punishment without moral or practical purpose.